


Better This Way

by delighted



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Domestic, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 05:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14687349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delighted/pseuds/delighted
Summary: Danny’s staying at Steve’s while his house is being restored after a fire. Only... maybe Steve’s is where he really belongs....





	Better This Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trinipedia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinipedia/gifts).



> Just a little something that came to me when I was half asleep and making coffee...... 
> 
> T—I wanted to write something warm and cozy for you... this is what came out when I tried. It’s not Steve’s POV, and it’s nowhere near long enough, but hopefully it helps..... <3

Danny likes it when he’s up before Steve. It hasn’t happened a whole lot, in this weird time since they’ve been living together, since some unbridled maniac burnt Danny’s beloved home to a crisp. But he likes that time to himself, in the still quiet of the not-yet-morning. Because, it’s only when he’s up really early that he beats Steve down to the kitchen, gets to be the one to start the coffee, and he savors it—not just because it’s some weird competitive thing (although undoubtedly it is), but because there’s this soft timelessness to it. A sense that anything might be possible in the day that hasn’t started yet. He savors the feeling of being rumpled and sleep tousled, barefoot and bleary eyed—he’s always liked that. There’s something pure about it, something honest... something authentically him that somehow gets lost once he puts on pressed trousers and slicks back his hair. That’s not a façade, his work self. It’s very much a part of who he is, even minus the tie. But he’s always felt that kind of deeper, more connected sense of identifying with who he is before even his first sip of coffee. Which in a way is to embrace a kind of softness he wouldn’t otherwise want to admit to, because Danny before caffeine is a strange creature indeed.

The other thing Danny really likes about living here with Steve, is that moment in the night when he gets up to piss, and has to walk past Steve’s room to go down the hall to the second bathroom. Steve’s been leaving his door open, and Danny isn’t sure if that’s something he’s just always done, or if he’s doing it because Danny’s in the house? And it took him some courage and a few nights to work himself up to it, but he pauses for a moment in Steve’s doorway and listens to his breathing, catches a glimpse of his bare shoulders—those tattooed upper arms, tan against the white of the sheets, in the spilled light from the hall, or the hint of morning light creeping through the curtains. There’s a peace about Steve when he’s sleeping, that he never comes anywhere near while he’s awake, and something about it feels like a promise to Danny. Some kind of hope for a future that’s less strained, less contentious, less liable to flare into something horribly incandescent at barely a moment’s notice.

Danny likes, on the mornings he wins the coffee making, he likes to take his coffee out to one of the lanais and sit with it, bare feet pressing into the deck railings, damp of the wicker chair from the night’s rain or the inevitable morning dew soaking into his sleep shorts. Likes to gather a moment of that sleepy pre-day time of not-thought, of not-being Detective Williams yet. Of just being Danny.

He’s thought before, that being “just Danny” has been part of this whole retirement thing. And as the kids get older, too. Parenting an older kid becomes a bit more about letting go, a bit less about holding on, and that’s maybe how he feels about his work lately as well. There’s this sense he’s begun to feel, in that can’t-quite-put-words-to-it yet kind of way... it’s there, trickling in somewhere in the back of his subconscious, some slightly familiar, slowly dawning, softly brightening sense of realization... of _something_. It’s warm, he knows that. It fills him with a sense of comfort, of ease, of peace... kind of like what he feels when he stands briefly in that doorway and listens to Steve sleep. Just a hint of something that feels calmer, safer, more solid than what life tends to be at the moment. He hopes it’s something that’s coming, something that’s growing, something that will blossom into view soon. He imagines it has to do with retirement, but then, he’s not totally sure, as he’s not entirely certain what exactly it is.

But he likes those times, those morning moments, to himself.

He doesn’t get a whole lot of them, because Steve does tend to get up at the crack of dawn to immerse himself in the salt water waves that beckon constantly just outside his door. Danny’s own desire to be at sea is less consistent. He could go surfing every day for a week, then not even need to look at the ocean for a month. But Steve is compelled by that tide-like-pull. Every day. Every morning. And on the days when it doesn’t happen, because they’ve been up too late the night (or, morning, really) before for a case, or when they get called too early in the morning for one, Danny can tell. And he’d always wondered, those days when Steve had seemed “off” or crabby or a little shorter in temper than usual. Now Danny knows. It’s when Steve doesn’t swim.

Steve joins Danny on the upstairs lanai this morning. Settles softly next to him, his own steaming mug of coffee resting easily in his hand. Sometimes they’ll talk, but never about work. Steve drew that line early and solidly, with only a little resistance from Danny at first.

“If we’re going to be living together, we have to have rules about when we do and do not talk about work, or we’ll drive each other crazy,” Steve had explained, when he suggested mornings as no-work-talk times.

Danny had objected that they were likely to drive each other crazy regardless of any amount of time spent not talking about work, but Steve had insisted, and truth be told, Danny doesn’t mind. He soon found he likes it, having time with Steve, not thinking about work.

It’s something they’ve always had, of course, because they don’t tend to talk about work on Friday-pizza-nights, or Saturday-surfing-days, but having a set time they spend together every day where talking about work is strictly prohibited, well, it’s different. And Danny finds himself growing accustomed to it.

It does mean they don’t talk much in these early morning moments, if Steve joins Danny to sit and drink some coffee before he goes for his swim. But that’s something Danny’s growing fond of as well, and this particular morning, he’s finding he enjoys it even more than he’s previously imagined. Or maybe there’s something new to it. He’s not entirely sure because he’s not had much coffee yet and he’s still more than a little dozy.

Steve seems to enjoy this dozy version of Danny. It’s hard to get a sense of that, because he’s not got his deductive functions fully online yet when it happens, but he just has this vague sense that Steve enjoys these morning times together. Danny likes that he does, and he’s not really sure what to make of that.

Danny showers, then makes lunches for them both, and cooks a nice breakfast while Steve swims. Then they eat out on the lanai and Steve takes his famous Navy shower while Danny dresses, and they head in to work together—sometimes they just take the Camaro, sometimes they both drive in. It hadn’t taken long at all to establish that schedule. Danny doesn’t think they even ever discussed it, it just kind of happened. Which he thinks probably should be a little surprising, given how contentious so many aspects of their partnership tend to be, but somehow it just seems right, that those daily kinds of intimate living together things should just flow readily for them. It’s nice, he often thinks. To have a peaceful and easy morning time with another person. It’s certainly not something anyone would have called mornings at the house when he was married to Rachel. And it’s not like that, mornings with the kids. But when it’s just him and Steve, there’s this calm peacefulness to it that he really enjoys.

Of course, more often than not, the peace is shattered when they get to the office and reality sets back in. But it’s nice to have a little bubble of it before that happens.

Sometimes they find moments of that calm in the midst of the day—five minutes and a cup of coffee shared on Steve’s office sofa, arms resting gently against each other, thighs bumping just enough to ground them, or a quiet lunch in Danny’s office while the rest of the team’s running surveillance.

But most of the time, that bubble shatters on the chaos of the day.

Evenings brings a different kind of energy. They each have their preferred restoratives—after a really hard day they’ll open a bottle of wine and sit together and just de-stress. But on a normal day, Steve will sometimes swim again, while Danny cooks, then Danny will read while Steve cleans the kitchen. Or Danny will take his book down to the edge of the water and sit with a beer while Steve swims, and they’ll cook together in companionable comfort, washing up together after.

Those times, though, there usually is talking about work. Partly because it takes both of them a while to come down from the day sometimes, and partly because they both often need to process things that have happened. There are even times they figure out something about a case, over a second glass of red, or while chopping onions, or drying dishes.

The point is, those are nice times, their evenings, and when they don’t get them for whatever reason, they usually miss it, and sometimes work hard to recapture something of that calming, restorative evening energy. But it’s different, very different, from the morning.

Maybe it’s partly that mornings are simply more intimate. That sleepy headed bleary eyed not entirely awake yet soft muted haze. And maybe it’s because mornings are before those work day selves have come online, while evenings are more about easing them back.

Both are enjoyable, both are valuable, but there’s more promise to the morning time. More possibility. Morning’s the time when anything might happen.

So, of course, morning is when something finally does.

It’s just an ordinary Tuesday, nothing special. Nothing much happened the day before, either. They had an easy day, a nice evening—cooked a simple but filling meal together, sat out on the lanai after with the rest of the bottle of wine, Danny read his book, Steve played his guitar, then they went to bed early. Even the weekend had been what some might call a bit dull. They’d done some chores, gone grocery shopping together, helped each other fold their laundry, cooked together, watched a movie and a ball game, had a few beers sitting out in the sun down by the water. They hadn’t gone out, hadn’t seen anyone else. It was the most domestic they’d gotten, the first time they’d had a whole weekend they’d just stayed in the whole time, uninterrupted by cases or coworkers or children.

But maybe that’s exactly it, maybe that is what it took, a big enough push on this gradual, inevitable slide into domesticity. Maybe because they both found they liked it, wanted more of it, and maybe that made them begin to see, even if wasn’t conscious at first, what _else_ they might want.

Danny’s up first, and he’s maybe a little less bleary than normal, having had not one but several good night’s sleep in a row, which is something of a rarity. He’s in the kitchen making coffee when Steve comes in, and he’s maybe a bit more sleep-addled still. Probably that’s what it is, because he walks over to Danny, standing at the coffee maker, and he smacks Danny on the ass, mutters “Good morning,” and brushes a stubbly kiss to his neck.

He doesn’t seem to think anything’s amiss, either, so maybe he intended to do it or maybe he just is still half asleep and forgot himself... but Danny’s awake enough, and the scent of coffee’s now hitting his senses, which pulls him even more into focus (as if the slap on his ass and the kiss weren’t enough—that was like cold water over his head), and he turns around, following Steve’s progression as he, still sleepily, gets out the milk for Danny’s coffee and two mugs.

“What?”

Danny almost doesn’t want to even say anything, just wants to wait to see if Steve catches on. So he just continues to look somewhat quizzically at Steve, who might be coming a little more awake. Either Steve is playing dumb or he hasn’t realized it yet, or Danny doesn’t know what, but he’s evidently going to ignore what just happened.

“Come sit down by the water while I swim? We can have coffee down there first.”

And that’s new. Sure, Danny sits down at the beach in the evenings, with a beer, while Steve swims. But for some reason, he’s yet to do it in the mornings, and there’s something about the fact that Steve would want him there with him that stirs something somewhere deep in his belly. He nods, then turns back to the coffee, maybe takes a few deep calming breaths before he returns with the pot to pour them each a cup.

It’s nice, he thinks, as he watches Steve head out over the soft morning waves, the salt air in the mornings. He’s not usually a beach-in-the-morning person, unless they’re trying to get some surfing in before the tourists hit, but this is nice. Watching Steve swim is soothing, as well. He’s often thought that. Steve keeps a nearly perfect rhythm, and it borders on hypnotic. Good for a trancelike state, good for thinking—or rather, not thinking, letting your mind just flow. Which is what Danny does. Or rather, it’s what Danny wants to do, but he keeps returning again and again to that brush of stubbly lips on his neck. He’s kept himself from putting his hand to where it happened, not wanting to call attention to it, if Steve hadn’t meant to do it, hadn’t realized he was doing it—and maybe Danny doesn’t want to admit why he doesn’t want to alert Steve, doesn’t want to admit that maybe he hopes Steve will do it again. But of course he does.

He allows himself, with Steve safely far out at sea, to touch his neck, and he shivers at the memory.

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it before, the possibility that they might, as people have so often suggested, have a romantic relationship. It’s maybe less that he once contemplated it and maybe more that since so many people said it so often, it just kind of became something that was vaguely plausible. Which maybe doesn’t really even make any sense at all, but it just slowly grew into something that he maybe came to imagine would probably happen one day, just... because it was inevitable. And that’s probably a very strange way to think about ending up in a relationship, and yet, that’s how this feels now, he realizes. Like he’s got a clue now that he’s finally in the home stretch of something he’s always imagined might come to pass.

There’s the slight possibility that he’s still sitting there with his hand on his neck when Steve reemerges from the water, and if the barest hint of a grin flashes briefly over Steve’s face it might not be in response to that. Danny lets his hand fall as though he were just stretching a crick in his neck, but Steve doesn’t react. He stands at Danny’s feet, toweling off and smiling, and they talk about breakfast, then head in and make eggs and toast together, eating it upstairs on the lanai, and maybe they sit a little closer than normal, but it’s hard to tell.

It stays with Danny, though, that kiss, all through the day when they have a fairly easy case that’s resolved tidily well within business hours, into the evening when they make a nice pot of pasta and drink maybe a bit too much wine while they watch their favorite show. It stays with Danny while he sleeps. And the next morning, when he’s up first, but Steve doesn’t join him in the kitchen, alright, there’s a twinge of disappointment that he tries, he really tries to ignore. Kinda hard to, though, to be honest.

But not much later, he’s out on the lanai with his coffee, and Steve joins him. And he musses Danny’s hair with his hand, then kisses the top of Danny’s head.

“Sleep well?”

Danny’s gone all soft and yet electric at the touch, but he grunts out a vague affirmation before he thinks it makes Steve suspicious that he hasn’t replied.

When Steve gets up to go for his swim, he plants another kiss on Danny’s head along with a request for smoothies for breakfast.

“Sure, babe,” Danny replies, then sits there contemplating this change in his life.

It’s another fairly normal day. Steve sends Tani and Junior out on a case together, grooming them, Danny thinks, to take over when they eventually retire. For their part, they get some good paperwork done, and if he notices that Steve picks only the stuff that requires them both be in his office together, he doesn’t comment on that. But he does enjoy it. If he’s hoping for another kiss or smack on the ass, he’s disappointed. But he wouldn’t expect that at work anyway, would he? Well, he shouldn’t....

Steve grills some fish that evening, and they eat sitting out on the downstairs lanai, under the twinkly lights, with a lovely fruity bottle of white and a crunchy slaw that Danny made that might have pineapple in it, and it might all feel a little too nice for a weekday evening, but he’s not exactly complaining.

They stay up a little later than usual, taking about “the kids” as Steve’s taken to calling Tani and Junior, and if Danny notices anything about the tone in Steve’s voice, anything about a shift towards seeming more comfortable with the concept of not being with Five-0, well. Danny sure isn’t about to point that out.

As they’re in the hall upstairs, about to head into their rooms to get ready for bed, Steve plants a soft hand on Danny’s rear as he says “Night, buddy,” and Danny thankfully has enough reflex to return the words, and if his voice is a little higher than normal, well, maybe Steve won’t notice.

He sleeps fitfully that night, which at first upsets him, but then he realizes the other times have been in the morning... and this, this time—though there was no kiss involved, which is maybe what he’s really bothered about—but this time was at night. This time was on the way to bed, rather than on the way to starting the day... and maybe that says something entirely different, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it’s just when Steve’s sleepy, and maybe Danny’s just completely overanalyzing everything and Steve’s just being affectionate and this is what he does when he lives with someone, regardless of if he’s attracted to them or not.

He’s pretty sure that’s not the case, but he’s sometimes a little unkind to himself when he overanalyzes stuff.  

It’s dumb o’clock before he finally drifts off to a completely un-restful slumber, so of course Steve’s up before him. By the time he stumbles down the stairs in the desperate hope that coffee will make life not miserable, Steve’s out for his swim. Danny downs his coffee, pours a second cup, and resets the pot to brew more. Then he sets about making the only food he’s interested in eating, and he doesn’t allow himself to question it, just knows he’s not getting through the day on anything less than chocolate chip pancakes, and he knows it, knows Steve will judge him for it, but he can just fuck right off and smack him on the ass because it’s all his dang fault anyway.

Ahem.

Danny’s a bit of an unpleasant jerk when he’s not slept well.

Steve, of course, knows this, and when he ambles into the kitchen, bright and chipper and dripping saltwater, and heads to the machine for his second cup and sees it’s a full pot, Danny knows, that will be his first clue. The smell of burning sugar and chocolate probably hits his senses right about at that point, and he turns—Danny can feel it though his back is to him—he turns and stands, probably in his judging stance, and Danny is so not in the mood for the scolding he knows is coming.

Only it doesn’t.

He keeps his back turned, and he never really thought you could make pancakes with anger, but you can. He pours his frustration (okay, it’s not really anger, it’s frustration, and probably if he wasn’t such a dope he’d be aware that it’s sexual frustration, but he is, he’s a dope, right now he’s being a great big stupid dope), but he pours that frustration into making the pancakes, and that’s probably a recipe for an upset tummy, eating frustration like that, but when he’s done he feels better, and when he turns around with a plate full of pancakes, he sees Steve’s got some fruit ready to go with them, and that’s maybe his subtle way of saying at least we’re going to have something healthy as well—ordinarily he’d insist on eggs to go with pancakes, but at a guess he didn’t dare come near the stove. Steve’s got the stuff along with plates and the syrup on trays, but he lets Danny lead the way. At first he thinks just the dining room, but as he heads that way he winds up being drawn outside, thinking the fresh air will be good for him, and he blames Steve for that. Steve, infiltrating his thoughts, his preferences, his reactions, his... everything. Dammit. 

Steve watches him carefully, but not too closely, so he can’t get upset about being scrutinized, and they don’t talk. Which, okay, they’ve established a bit of a thing about not talking in the mornings, but this... this is not easy and comforting and it is absolutely not creating a relaxing bubble of just being Danny that will sustain him during a long and challenging day. This is creating a Danny who is so on edge that if anything even remotely untoward happens during the day he’s liable to go off like a freaking rocket.

All of which, Danny guesses, Steve probably is aware of.

When they finish, Steve sends Danny off to shower while he cleans up. They could technically both shower at the same time—meaning there are two showers, not that they’d both fit in either of the showers, though that thought hasn’t helped Danny’s situation in the least—but the water heater is old and fussy and it’s asking for an unpleasant five minutes to even attempt it. So they avoid it if they can.

Danny stays in considerably longer than five minutes, but it doesn’t help at all. By the time he gets out and dries off, Steve’s gotten in his shower, but left his door open, so that as Danny walks by on his way to his room to get dressed he can hear the water... hitting Steve’s body, hitting the tub floor, hitting the walls of the shower, the shower curtain... and he stands there in the hall, hair still wet and dripping down his back, and his head is a mess and he feels like he has an itch he can’t reach, and he thinks he’s going to slowly start going insane.

Fortunately it’s a busy day, involving lots of car chases and the chance to keep things from blowing up, and maybe it’s awful but when someone swings a punch at him and he gets to hit back it feels damn good. That’s not something Danny would ordinarily admit to. He’ll happily punch people who have been abusive, but to gain satisfaction from punching an ordinary asshole who thought he could get away with hitting a cop, well. It doesn’t exactly make him proud. (To be clear, if it had been another cop, Danny would have felt better about it, but as the cop in question is himself, well....)

At the end of the day, Lou suggests Kamekona’s, as they’ve all missed lunch, and Danny thinks Steve’s about to find a polite way to say no, but he can’t face going home with Steve just yet, so he jumps on it and says yes, and he doesn’t look at Steve’s face to see how he takes that.

They don’t sit next to each other.

Danny sits next to Tani, and while Steve and Lou get a second round of beers, she turns to him with a look that he can’t read.

“What the hell is up with you and the boss man today?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Junior is sitting quietly, Danny thinks he’s trying to send _please don’t do this_ looks Tani’s way, but she rarely pays attention to him when she’s got something in her sights, and she doesn’t now, and he knows it, so he’s just doing that strong silent thing he does so well, as if he could somehow mute her outrage by his own silence. Of course it doesn’t work. But Danny appreciates the effort.

“Don’t be a jerk. You guys had a fight or something. It’s weird.”

“No we didn’t. Why would you think that?”

“Um, because you’re not sitting next to each other, and by next to each other I mean with your arms wrapped around each other—you know, like you always do?”

And, okay, that gets to him maybe a little, because of course she’s right, and his stomach kind of turns, because if they ruin what they had, for eight years they had, because Danny can’t take Steve smacking his ass but _not_ kissing him on the neck, well. He’s going to feel like a really big jerk.

Fortunately at that point the guys return with more beers, and if he feels Tani’s eyes on Steve, he’s pretty sure Steve doesn’t notice, so at least there’s that.

When they get home that night, they hit the showers at the same time, the risk apparently worth the avoidance of any awkward moment in the hall, and for the first time since they’ve been living together, they go to bed without saying goodnight.

Needless to say, Danny doesn’t sleep at all.

Until about five, when he falls asleep, hard. He sleeps through Steve getting up, he sleeps through Steve making coffee, he sleeps though Steve going out for a swim. He’s still asleep when Steve comes back in, and is only awakened when a damp and salty Steve leans over him, setting a mug of coffee on his bedside table, and pressing a wet and scruffy kiss to his cheek.

Danny’s not sure if he was meant to be aware of the kiss or not, but he’s not fast enough to stop his natural reaction, which is some kind of sound half way between a purr and a moan. He doesn’t bother hoping Steve doesn’t notice. He knows he does, because he sees that suppressing-a-smirk look on Steve’s face.

Steve evidently takes it as an invitation to join Danny in bed, and he sits on the edge of the bed, getting Danny’s sheets wet, but he can’t be bothered to complain because Steve’s next to him and the world seems a little less messed up because of it.

“Lou asked me if we’d had a fight.”

Danny huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, Tani asked me the same thing.”

“I told him I didn’t know....” Steve pauses. “Did we?”

Danny rubs his face in his hands and squirms to sit up so he can drink some coffee before attempting to answer that question.

“No, we didn’t. I just... I don’t even know how to say it.”

Steve sighs and scoots closer, so more of him is touching more of Danny. “I think maybe I do.”

Danny looks at him expectantly. Now here will be an interesting turn of events... if Steve is the one to fix this with words, and not Danny. The thought makes him smile, which gives Steve the encouragement he wanted.

“I think maybe I should kiss you,” he says, and Danny’s reaction is a reflexive wetting of his lips, and it draws a breathy sound from Steve who then moves even closer to Danny. “What do you think, buddy? Do you think you’d like that? If I kissed you... right... on... the—” and Danny lunges forward and kisses Steve.

It’s a shock, the kiss. To both of them, like an electric pulse shoots through them at the contact, and they pull back, stunned expressions on their faces.

“Yeah,” Danny rasps out. “I think maybe that was exactly....” And he pulls Steve by the back of the neck until he’s against his lips again and a soft moan escapes from somewhere deep inside him because, yeah, that just feels right, somehow. Like it’s been missing and they haven’t known it, and now something is more in balance, something is restored, which doesn’t really make sense, as nothing was exactly broken, only that’s exactly how it feels.

“I hate to bring this up now, but we are so going to be late for work.”

Danny looks over at the clock on the desk and sees they have plenty of time. He looks askance at Steve, questioning his concept of time.

“Well, unless you’re okay leaving things this way?” And he not-very-subtly looks down and Danny sees what he means. But the thing is. Danny kind of _does_ think they should leave things this way for now. And not because he’s some sort of sadistic bastard. Not even because he wants to punish Steve, just a little, for the misery of the past couple of days. But because he doesn’t trust himself, doesn’t trust Steve, that this really is the right thing. Every cell in his body is screaming that it is and he can shut the fuck up, but he’s never felt this strongly about something, and it spooks him. And he wants some time. To be sure.

Steve reads at least some of that in his face and nods. “Drink your coffee, I’m going to jump in the shower....” (... _And take care of this_ goes unsaid, but Danny knows he means it, and if that doesn’t send just a tiny bit of a thrill through his entire nervous system... well. It does. Just to be clear.)

“I’ll go make breakfast,” Danny offers, as though that somehow makes up for it. He climbs out of bed, going around Steve who seems reluctant to move, and when he walks by him to get to the door, Steve smacks him on the ass—hard. Biting his lip to soothe the sensation, he feels the grin take over his face as he heads downstairs. When he hears the water turn on, he tries, and fails, to not imagine why it is that Steve’s in there a little bit longer than usual.

They eat breakfast sitting about as close as they usually do, they get through the day mostly intact, and if Danny catches Tani nodding appreciatively and sharing a moment with Junior, well. She can think what she likes. Probably she should take some credit for it. Probably Lou should as well. Because maybe they both needed a little bit of a kick in the pants.

The point is, things progress mostly normally for the entire day. Until they get home. They find themselves standing just inside the front door, almost as though they’ve never been here before—and, really, they never have. The house is the same, technically _they_ are the same, and yet everything is utterly and completely different.

“Well,” Steve offers. “What do we do now?”

Danny turns to face him. “I think we just do what we normally do. Swim first, then dinner. Then....” And if he licks his lips as he trails off, well. Can’t really blame him, can you?

Steve nods, fixated on Danny’s lips. But he doesn’t move, so Danny turns him around and aims him at the stairs, and gives a gentle push to send him on his way to change, heading himself to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine because he needs something a little stronger than beer tonight.

He’s standing on the lanai, sipping his wine, when Steve comes out, and if he lets his hand rest, briefly on Danny’s ass, neither of them comment on it. He takes the wineglass from Danny’s hand, takes a small sip, then hands it back and wraps an arm around Danny, and they walk down to the water like that. Honestly Danny’s surprised that Steve doesn’t try and kiss him before he swims, and maybe he wishes he had, but he sits there the whole time Steve’s swimming, and doesn’t even think, just feels. Feels the fading sun on his face, feels the warm sand between his toes, feels the wine in his mouth as he swishes it around before he swallows. Every sensation is heightened, sweeter, deeper, and he’s thrilled by it and also relaxed by it, and that seems a bit odd to him until it doesn’t. It just feels right. It feels like something’s clicked into place, like when you get that one clue at a crime scene that busts the whole case open and you’re off and you just know.

By the time Steve comes back out of the water, Danny’s feeling his body vibrating with something electric, and when Steve bends down and drips salt water into his wine and tips his chin up so he can plant a smacking kiss right on his lips, it’s just as shocking as it was before, and he grins, just grins, because he knows this is exactly what it should have been, a long time ago, but instead of regretting that it wasn’t, he’s just so damn pleased that it is now.

They make pasta for dinner, maybe because they need something simple they can’t mess up, because there’s a lot more kissing than cooking going on in the McGarrett kitchen tonight, and neither of them cares in the least.

After dinner they test Danny’s theory that they can’t shower at the same time, because they do, both of them in Steve’s small shower, which turns out to be more of an advantage than a hindrance, and when they tumble into bed, damp and still naked, flashes of the past weeks—of standing outside Steve’s room, of watching him sleep, listening to him shower, waking up before him, sitting together over coffee—flood Danny’s brain, and when Steve wraps his arms around him, pulling him in for a lingering kiss, the images all coalesce and form _this_. This perfect rightness of their bodies pressed together.

They’re sated from their shower activities—not completely sated, but sated enough to drift easily off—and there’s something deeply gratifying about being still tinged with desire as they tangle together in sleep. Danny can’t remember the last time sleep felt so good, and maybe he wakes a few times, but then Steve pulls him closer, pressing a kiss to his head and murmuring something soothing, and he drifts back off with a smile on his face each time.

Danny wakes first, in the morning, and he’s so grateful that he does, because as much as he loves that time in the house to himself, this... this is magic on a whole different level. This is getting to watch Steve, still asleep, like he’s done from the doorway... but up close it’s even more compelling, and he knows now, he knows absolutely that the sense of promise he felt in those moments was leading to this. It was all leading to this, always leading to this. This moment of pure promise, of Steve still asleep but about to wake... and kiss Danny. And he knows that moment is coming, wants it, anticipates it, is thrilled by it... but there’s a peace and calm and ease in this moment as it is, and he wants to wrap it up and carry it with him for the whole day.

But then Steve does wake, and when he sees Danny watching him, he grins, and he pulls him close, and it’s just a quick peck, mindful of morning breath but needing the kiss immediately nonetheless.

“Yeah,” Steve says when he withdraws from the kiss. “I definitely like this better.”

“Mmm,” Danny concurs, running a hand over that bare and tan, tattooed shoulder that’s right there, right next to him, his for the taking. He presses a kiss to it as he begins to move himself out of bed before things can go too far. “I’ll go make coffee.” And evidently it’s going to be Steve’s thing, because once more he smacks Danny on the ass when he climbs out of bed. Grunting appreciatively, he pulls on a pair of Steve’s boxers, mutters “Go swim you ridiculous oaf,” and pads downstairs to start the morning in a whole new way.

He’s standing over a pan of scrambled eggs when Steve lumbers in from his swim, and it’s as though he didn’t bother drying at all, which maybe, in his haste to get back up to the house and nuzzle at Danny’s neck, maybe he didn’t. He drips salt water in the eggs, and Danny scolds him, but he just nuzzles further into Danny’s neck, rubbing him raw with stubble, and he’s going to leave a mark, and then the whole team will know... but then evidently they already _did_ know so maybe it just doesn’t matter in the least, and Danny thinks he likes that a lot more than he’d probably admit.

And sure enough, when they do make it into the office more than a little late, Tani’s standing in the hall outside Junior’s office, having a chat about something or the other, and when she sees them she mutters “Oh thank god, finally,” and ducks inside Junior’s office closing the door before Danny—or Steve—can respond.

The case they get that day’s a bit of a mess, but they manage to tidy it up not terribly late, and if they treat themselves to shrimp and beer after, maybe it’s become habit and maybe that’s okay, because it’s comforting and it’s ohana and it’s tradition, and there’s something really nice about the continuity of it, and maybe they sit a little bit closer, but maybe not, they always did sit close anyway, but when Steve and Lou get up to get round two of beers, Tani just grins hugely at Danny, from across the table.

“See, isn’t it so much better this way?” She asks, and he bites his lip but he smiles.

“Yeah,” he admits, downing the rest of his first beer. “It really kind of is.”

And when Steve comes back and hands Danny a second beer, if he bends down and presses a kiss to the side of his neck, no one reacts in the least and Danny finds he just doesn’t mind at all. And if he lets his hand settle on Steve’s thigh, and Steve’s hand finds his and holds it, well it really is just a whole lot better this way.


End file.
